@joshvt said:

8GB DDR3-1600 (figure I can add more later if needed)

if you take 2x4GB now, you can have 24GB max later with 4 banks without exchanging the modules. If you think 8GB now and 24GB later is enough for you, go for it.

@joshvt said:

NVIDIA Quadro K600 1GB (what compromises am I making here?)

I can't say anything about the sketchup performance of the K600. The latest Quadro-GeForce comparison in Sketchup and 3DSmax viewport that i know is from 2010! http://www.cgarchitect.com/2010/07/cgarchitects-graphics-card-round-up This is a very long time and i'm not sure about the performance of the latest quadro cards in sketchup. For 3DSmax it has turned towards the Geforce in the last versions i think. I haven't seen any review of the Kepler based Quadro cards. I'm waiting for a new comparison for a long time now... Maybe a K600 is working good, because sketchup is based on opengl, but i don't know. Looking at the opengl benchmarks on tomshardware, there is no clear winner for me. Very different results depending on application and scene.
Based on the specs the K600 is very weak. It has the same chip like a entry level geforce GT630 http://www.anandtech.com/show/6813/nvidia-launches-quadro-k4000-k2000-k2000d-k600
For GPU-rendering it's definitely the wrong card with only 192 Cuda cores...

@joshvt said:

1TB 7200rpm sata -rep suggested this would be ok since it has 24GB SSD Cache- would like some input here. I need the 1TB capacity as I have a lot of data that needs to exist on this machine.

I have no experience with SSD caching, but maybe it works ok. But it looks quite expensive as BOXX option... more than $300 for 1TB HDD with 24GB cache?!? wow!
A "small" 1TB HDD costs $60-70 today and a good "full size" SSD with 250GB $180...

I have banned all HDDs from my workstation last year because they where the loudest part of my system. I'm using only a 256GB + 512GB SSD now.

@joshvt said:

When I go to jncs and select options that seem close, it says the price is $2271 (that is using a gtx770 video card which i am guessing is better than the boxx card- I don't know which one listed would be more comparable?) That is also before liquid cooling which the BOXX includes. The gap is narrower than you mentioned.

Which card? The K600?
The jcns config has 4.5GHz instead of 4.3GHz. You clearly pay for the GHz here. But i think the price is ok for what you get, if you can't/want do it yourself. But i think i wouldn't pay more.
I don't know which cooler they are using, but without a watercooler it will be very hard to reach the 4.5GHz with acceptable temps and noise.
But as i said above you can build a watercooled system with the specs above for ~$1600.

Something like the Lux/Insolation Analysis tool in LightUp? (Scroll down to the bottom of the page.)

An example from the LightUp Gallery:

http://www.light-up.co.uk/images/image00013.jpg

nice! this works perfectly. thanks!

@joshvt said:

I am also a sucker for well designed products- which the macbook is...

I would check if all of my apps are available for OSX before evaluating the design, it's still a tool.. but priorities may vary.

Norbert

@gaieus said:

The fact is that Kerkythe is being developed by one person who (until recently) didn't have any experience on Mac. Also, this is the first release for Mac and obviously the "Mac user base" is quite small (true that Podium has only released its first Mac version, too).

All the help files for Kerky are being developed by enthusiastic users who devote their time to sharing their experiences. I find these help files quite intuitive and helpful and also the people on the KT forums (and yes, the Podium forum is alo a great place).

I realize my post was a bit provocative and certainly don't want to start a pissing contest. The Mac workflow mindset is quite diferent. PC guys drive ten miles to save a penny on a gallon/litre of gas, Mac guys fillup across the street. 👊

Anywho, finally got an answer to my dilema...you got it...from a PC guy!

Unfortunately the built-in 'delete guides' menu item removes all guides [lines and points] in the model - including any in groups or component-instances [including locked ones] and even guides stored in 'off' layers - however, guides within a component definition that has no instances in the model are safe...
Two years ago I wrote a set of context-menu tools to deleted guide-lines / -points 'selectively' - here's an update ConsDeleteContext.rb I would also be possible to write a new tool to 'preserve selected guides' - it would duplicate them in a new definition that had no instances [with a bit of vertical 'edge' ([0,0,0],[0,0,1]) at the origin***], later you could choose to 'restored preserved guides' and it would place an instance of that component [at the origin, erasing the temporary 'edge' there ? *** I haven't quite worked through how the guide-component 'insertion' point is kept for later reinsertion 😕 - but it will be possible], then explode the instance and then delete that component-definition's entities, thereby purging it from the component-browser's list. Of course purging the model's unused components in between times would delete the preserved-guide component and the saved guides would be lost - just like copying something new to the clipboard loses the current data. The 'preserve selected guides' would be like using the clipboard and it'd overwrite any already preserved, but it could be set to warn if there is an existing preserved set [i.e not yet restored] that'd be lost in the process, and it'd ask you either to overwrite the set or to add these new guides to the existing set ?

Unfortunately I'm stowed under will other things, and I'm unlikely to be able to look at this before sometime in June! - but if anyone wants to take up the ideas feel free...